


how the mighty fall (in love), pt 3

by goodmanperfectsoldier



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Chef Steve, College AU, Genius Bucky, Groping, M/M, Summer Romance, Young & Hungry AU, all of these are wips, bucky is extremely thirsty, but they’re both 18!, gratuitous staring, no completed fic here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 01:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15159083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmanperfectsoldier/pseuds/goodmanperfectsoldier
Summary: First of all, don't worry - there is no part one or part two of this story. That's because this is not really a story at all, just a place for me to share the bits and pieces of various fics that I write this month for Camp NaNoWriMo. This is the third Camp that I've spent writing a variety of SteveBucky fics, hence the "pt 3". The rest of the title is from a Fall Out Boy song because I'm nothing if not predictable.Anyway. Each chapter is a bit of a different fic. The chapter titles and descriptions will correspond to what the story is about. I'll update the tags for the whole thing as I go.None of these are "finished" and some (many) of them may never be. I won't be editing them at all (at least not during Camp)! I'm not looking for constructive criticism anywhere, but if you have any suggestions for where a story should go, let me know in the comments! And definitely let me know if you like any of them, because that'll probably make me more likely to try to write more of that story.Each of these is based on some idea that my wonderful best friend and writing partner Izzy and I came up with. Love and thanks to Izzy always!!LET'S DO THIS





	1. Tech Genius Bucky/Personal Chef Steve

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! This AU is loosely based on the ABC Family/Freeform show Young & Hungry which is one of my problematic faves. Bucky's a millionaire tech genius and Steve's his personal chef. For this one, I've started with the opening scene. If you've seen the pilot of the show, you know where this one is going ;) ;)

Steve took a deep breath and knocked on the door. After what felt like ten minutes, during which he wondered if he should knock again, it finally opened. Steve was surprised to see a woman standing there. She eyed him with an uninterested look on her face.

“Hello, what can I help you with?” Her voice was just as uninterested in Steve as her eyes. It was unnerving, but he’d made it this far already and he wasn’t going to be discouraged now.

“Hi, yeah, I’m, uh. I’m Steve, Steve Rogers, I’m a chef? I’m here about the chef position, I mean?” He lifted the knife case in his left hand, as if to prove it.

She looked him up and down in the space of a single blink. Steve stared back, unsure of what to do, but unwilling to back down.

“Mmhmm,” she finally said. “Come in.” She pulled the door open a little wider and Steve slipped past her. He didn’t get very far before he froze. 

“Whoa,” he said. Steve had been rendered speechless on only a couple of occasions before, and never by an apartment, of all things. But he couldn’t help it. This place was massive. He knew James Barnes was wealthy - he was talented in both engineering and business, a rare thing, and enough so that he was making Silicon Valley money in Brooklyn - and he knew, of course, that they were on the top floor of the apartment building, but he still wasn’t expecting what he saw when he walked in. Steve’s entire apartment could probably have fit in just the living room of this place. Granted, Steve was living in possibly the tiniest one-bedroom in the entire city, and sharing it with a roommate on top of that (Sam got the bedroom, since he had an actual job and paid most of the rent, leaving Steve to camp out on his twin bed behind a curtain in the corner of the living room). But their whole place would definitely fit in here neatly. 

And that was just the living room. From where he stood in the doorway, Steve could see across the living space to a dining area, and beyond that, a balcony that was practically its own room. There was a staircase on the other side, and next to that was the most beautiful home kitchen Steve had ever seen. Now he wasn’t just speechless, but breathless, too. He could see sleek black and stainless appliances, including a double-wide refrigerator and a six-burner stove. The counters, in contrast, were bright white marble. A professional mixer stood next to a Vitamix blender on the island, and a coffee-shop-level espresso machine was tucked in between the sink (also stainless, also double-wide, with a regular faucet and a pot-filler for instant boiling water) and the fridge.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and Steve startled. He turned his head, hoping that he hadn’t actually been drooling. The woman was still standing there, still regarding him as coolly as ever.

“Do you have your resume on hand?” Steve nodded and fumbled his knife case for a few seconds before carefully setting it down on the floor so that he could swing his backpack around and pull a copy of his resume out. The woman took it without a word and glanced over it. Her expression gave away not a single one of her thoughts. Steve, who had trouble hiding any of his emotions, ever, would have to get used to that - if he got the job, he reminded himself. He’d been here for about five minutes, no need to get ahead of himself, no matter how much he wanted it.

“Alright, Mr. Rogers,” she said after a moment. “Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the kitchen while I go take James’s lunch order.” Steve didn’t have a chance to tell her that he would rather she just call him by his first name before they were interrupted by the whoosh of fabric on wood and the thump of boots on the floor. Steve turned to look at the staircase and, wow.

If the sight of the kitchen had left him breathless, James Barnes, in the flesh, was going to give him an asthma attack. Steve had seen photos of him, of course; Barnes was no stranger to magazine features by now. Steve didn’t normally read things like Wired and Popular Science but he’d perused a couple of issues at the library the day after he’d answered the want ad, trying to get an idea of the kind of boss Barnes might be. The only thing he’d taken away, though, was that the guy seemed nice enough, and was most certainly easy on the eyes. That had definitely been the focus of the one particularly risqué shoot that Barnes had done for Brooklyn Monthly’s annual 30 Under 30 list, which featured him wearing nothing but a pair of gold boxer briefs to complement the brand new black and gold prosthetic arm he and his team had built for him.

None of that, though - not even the little gold shorts - could have prepared Steve for meeting the man in person. Barnes was taller than he seemed to be in print, probably brushing six feet, if Steve had to guess. And he was clearly built under the simple button-down and dark wash jeans he was wearing. Steve may have let his eyes linger on the way that Barnes’s thighs filled out those jeans just a couple seconds longer than was strictly appropriate. _Shit._ Steve snapped his attention back to Barnes’s face and that was no better, now he was just staring at the soft brown hair that curled sweetly across the man’s forehead, not to mention a pair of the most beautiful grey-blue eyes Steve thought he’d ever seen. And then he smiled and, _wow_ , Steve had to scold himself.

_Get yourself together, Rogers,_ he thought. _Remember he’s your future boyfr - your future boss! Boss. Not boyfriend. Fuck._


	2. The One Where Steve Gropes Himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know that feeling when you take your bra off at the end of the day? Steve does. And Bucky can’t handle it.
> 
> This one is set in the canon!verse, though it’s not necessarily canon-compliant.
> 
> [NOW COMPLETED!!!!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17775713)

Bucky didn’t mean to stare.

Really, he didn’t.

But he was. Staring. He was.

It wasn’t _his_ fault that Steve had absolutely no sense of modesty and a fervent desire to not be in his Captain America uniform any longer than strictly necessary. And that meant that Steve tended to start disrobing as soon as they hit friendly airspace, so that he could pull on a t-shirt and sweatpants before they even made it back to headquarters, much less got home to their apartment.

Bucky didn’t have a problem with any of that, of course. He could handle seeing Steve change in the middle of the quinjet; he’d seen Steve in pretty much every various state of undress he’d ever been in, by now. That’s not what made him stare. Not that he didn’t want to, but, you know. He could resist something as innocent as a little half-nudity, even from the guy he’d been drooling over since the ‘30s.

What Bucky had a problem with - or absolutely no problem with at all, depending on how you looked at it - was Steve, for lack of a better word, _groping himself_.

There was no other way to describe it. Steve would get the top portion of his uniform undone first thing, shrug out of the outer layer, and then pull off the under layer. Bucky’d taken a good look at it once (when Steve was not wearing it, thank you very much) and he knew that the piece Steve wore underneath offered a second layer of protection under the bulletproof fabric that lined the outer part of the suit, as well as a fair deal of compression. As far as Bucky could tell, it was expertly designed to allow Steve the necessary range of motion he needed to fight while also ensuring that, well. That Steve’s tits didn’t bounce around too much.

(Bucky was all too familiar with the bouncing. He was simultaneously relieved and disappointed every time Steve opted to take his daily run outside instead of next to Bucky on the reinforced treadmills in the gym.)

So, yes. Steve basically wore a sports bra under his uniform, and that wasn’t what Bucky had a problem with, either. Bucky didn’t have a single issue with any of these facts, individually.

It was when they all came together that he ended up frozen in place, one arm out of his own tac jacket, hoping no one had noticed that he hadn’t moved or _breathed_ in the last minute.

Because when Steve stripped out of his _sports bra_ (just the thought of it made Bucky have to suppress a shiver) in the middle of the quinjet barely an hour after boarding, the first thing he did was moan quietly, which would have been quite enough for Bucky, thank you, even if he didn’t follow it up by bringing his hands up to his own tits and squeezing like they were asleep and he need to get the blood flow going.

The only blood flowing was Bucky’s, and it was going to a place that he really, really didn’t need it right now. He was just beginning to try to will it down when something small and hard hit him on the side of the head. Concentration broken, he whipped around in the direction it had come from to find Sam and Natasha watching him, twin smirks on their faces. Bucky scowled. 

“Shut up,” he mumbled. Neither of them answered out loud, Sam waggled his eyebrows and Natasha raised just one in that way that she had when she was telling him something he definitely already knew. Bucky sighed. They were both right, and he knew it. 

He turned back for one last look at Steve to find that he’d finished the groping and moved onto divesting himself of his pants, boots long ago having been kicked to the other side of the cabin. Bucky got a glimpse of black briefs before Steve was pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a soft-looking shirt. It was then that Steve finally looked up and saw Bucky looking at him. 

_Whoops._ Bucky immediately felt his face heat up. It was one thing for Sam and Nat to catch him at this, but for Steve to see him staring…

But Steve just smiled, looking a little concerned. “You good, Buck?” The fight they’d just completed had been an easy one, no major injuries for anyone, but Bucky knew Steve was a worrier. Somehow, the fact that Steve’s first thought was to make sure Bucky was okay after catching him blatantly staring while he got dressed just made everything worse. Bucky heard himself make a noise that could have been an affirmative, if one was being generous, before he turned and ran. There wasn’t really anywhere to go in the quinjet, but thankfully there was a bathroom. Bucky was glad that he’d only just gotten his jacket off. He was more than halfway hard and he may have found his resolve tested had he been able to get to his dick more easily. 

He was not going to jerk off to thoughts of Steve touching his own chest twenty-five feet from the man in the bathroom of an aircraft carrying all of their friends. It was gross for a whole list of reasons that Bucky couldn’t think of right then. He was not going to do it. 

Really, he wasn’t.

He didn’t. But only by the grace of god. And the grace of Sam Wilson, who knocked on the bathroom door ten minutes later and informed Bucky that they were about to hit some turbulence that Bucky might want to come out and strap himself down for. Bucky had gone from half hard to just barely hard, thanks to couple minutes of silently reciting the make and model of every single firearm in the Avengers’ collective arsenal, but even so, he was still considering taking the risk and staying in the bathroom, turbulence be damned, until Sam added that Steve had already fallen dead asleep on one of the cots in the cabin. 

That was the other thing Steve liked to do best after a fight: fall asleep in the first place he got comfortable.

It gave Bucky a whole other set of feelings. Those were no easier to navigate than the ones in his pants.


	3. Whirlwind Summer Romance AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s lived on the island all his life. Bucky’s vacationing there for the first time. They fall in love fast, knowing the whole time that it’ll only last as long as the summer...

“Hey,” a voice said, interrupting Steve’s thoughts. Steve looked up from his sketchbook, startled, to find the very boy he’d spent the last two weeks trying not to draw standing right over him. He knew the page he’d been working on didn’t have anything incriminating on it, but he snapped his sketchbook closed on instinct anyway.

“Sorry if I startled you,” the boy said, an appropriately apologetic smile on his face. “I just - I’ve seen you around, you know? And there aren’t really any other kids my age out here, that I’ve seen? So I wanted to come say hello, see if you might want a friend?” He was still smiling confidently, but there was nevertheless a tinge of apprehension in his voice. It took another moment of the boy smiling down at him before Steve managed to make himself answer. The boy’s smile was beginning to fall by the time Steve was able to think anything other than, “ _Wow, he’s beautiful. I’ve been getting the angle of his nose all wrong…_ ”

“Oh,” Steve said, eloquently. “I, yeah, I mean. No, there aren’t many teenagers out here this late in the summer. High school’s already in session on the mainland…” He got so caught up in unnecessary explanation that he forgot the boy had actually asked him a question. Thankfully, the smile returned anyway.

“Yeah, I figured. So? Friends, maybe? I was gonna go dry off a little and then grab a hot dog from the snack shack down the way, I could get you one, too, if you want? And bring it back here?”

Steve normally wasn’t one to accept food from strangers very quickly - or at all, really - but there was something about this beautiful boy’s soft smile that had him nodding despite his better judgment.

“I’ll be here,” he said. The soft smile got a little bit wider.

“Cool, I’ll just be a few minutes!” The boy turned and jogged a few steps down the beach, giving Steve a spectacular view of the way his damp swim trunks clung to his ass and thighs. Steve hadn’t got a good enough look at him to try drawing anything below the waist yet, but he already knew he’d have to try to capture the curves of those muscles later. He was still staring when the boy turned around. Steve’s gaze snapped up to met his, face growing hot. He knew he’d been caught, but the boy just smirked like he was glad that Steve had been watching him leave.

“My name’s Bucky, by the way,” he called down the beach. Steve nodded again. Bucky. It as unusual, sure, but it suited him, somehow.

“I’m Steve,” he called back.

“Nice to meet you, Steve! Now don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.” He flashed that gorgeous smile one more time before turning and taking off again. This time, Steve didn’t feel embarrassed about where his eyes landed as Bucky jogged away to the showers and the snack shack.

***

“So, Steve, what brings you out to the island?” Bucky asked. They had long ago finished their hot dogs - Steve had offered to throw the wrappers away in the trash bin a couple yards down the sand, and though he didn’t look back to confirm it, he was pretty sure that Bucky had checked him out as he did so - and now they were just sitting on the beach together, talking. Bucky had shaken out his towel next to Steve’s and settled right down. Now the sun was getting low on the horizon, and Steve was trying hard not to get lost in the way that Bucky’s curls, now mostly dry, shone in the evening light. 

“Oh, I actually live here year-round,” Steve said.

“Wow, it must be cool, yeah? I bet it’s nice and quiet when the tourists are gone.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighed a little. It was quiet, alright. There were only a couple other kids around his age, and none of them were what he might call friends. Steve loved the island, but he was so ready to get off it and move to the mainland for college. Thank god it was finally time. 

Bucky must have thought Steve was sighing because he was ready for the tourism season to die off, because he slung his arm around Steve’s shoulders and said, “Aw, come on, we’re not all bad, huh?”

It took Steve a second to figure out what Bucky meant, not least because he was feeling suddenly warm with Bucky’s arm around him. He hoped Bucky just thought he was getting sunburnt, the way he’d kept turning pink all afternoon. When his brain caught up with the conversation, though, he had to smile. 

“Well, I dunno,” Steve said, teasing. “I let this guy buy me a hot dog earlier and now he won't leave me alone.” Steve had been looked down at his feet but he turned his head so that Bucky could see the mischievous look in his eyes and know that he was only kidding. Bucky looked briefly shocked, and then he was laughing. 

It wasn’t the first time in the afternoon that Steve had heard that laugh, but every time he did, he fell just a little further. It was a gorgeous laugh, one that Steve thought he wouldn’t mind hearing every day for the rest of his life. He wanted to take out a jar and scoop it full of laughter like he saw tourists doing with the beach sand. 

Something about the look on Steve’s face must have clued Bucky into what he was thinking at least a little, because next thing Steve knew, Bucky was tugging him closer. Steve went willingly, and Bucky only stopped when they were nearly nose to nose. 

“You’re kind of a little shit, you know, Steve?” Bucky whispered. “But you’re also pretty cute. Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.” Steve shook his head, unable, not for the first time that afternoon, to come up with the words. Bucky took another long moment to look Steve right in the eyes, and then he closed the distance between them. 

The kiss was short, but sweet, and gentle. Steve was worried that he still had hot dog breath, but all he tasted was the saltiness of the ocean and a sweetness that might have just been Bucky.


End file.
